


Meme Ficlet: Debts

by greywash



Series: Meme Ficlets (Spring 2012... and onward) [22]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-16
Updated: 2012-05-16
Packaged: 2017-11-05 11:59:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/406159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greywash/pseuds/greywash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Meme ficlet, archived off Tumblr; unbeta'ed and un-Britpicked.</em>
</p><p><strong>sothisstar requested</strong>: If two were to be fired from a job - how would six comfort him/her?</p><p>
  <strong>2. Anthea</strong>
  <br/>
  <strong>6. Henry Knight</strong>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meme Ficlet: Debts

The first day back, she just sleeps. She texted Mycroft in the cab from the train station the night before, so she knows he'll have his engines in motion: Lewis, probably, or Bianca; Bianca would be safer, because women are so very largely invisible to the Holmes brothers—which makes her own failure all the more humiliating. She forces herself not to think about it: just stretches out, face-first, on the vast white expanse of her own familiar bed and closes her eyes and sleeps and sleeps and sleeps.

She wakes up to a hand on her shoulder, very light.

"Just me," Henry says, quiet, and she takes a breath, then lets it out, and settles. He sighs and rubs his hand down her spine.

"Did Mr. Holmes call you?" she says, voice thick and flat. She doesn't want him here. Not now. She's not at her best like this.

"Don't be angry," he says. "I asked him to keep me posted."

She laughs, a very little. "You _blackmailed_ him into keeping you posted," she corrects, and then sighs. He doesn't deny it. Instead, he slides his palm over her shoulder, up into her hair.

"We're all doing what we can," he says.

"I didn't," she says, thick. "I made a mistake—he caught me out, _damn_ him, and he's not even—he's not even properly an agent, just a supercilious twat who thinks the entire world revolves around him and he's _right_ , God damn him, and that's—that's the worst part about it."

Her shoulders are painfully tense, but she isn't even aware of it until Henry puts his broad hands over her shoulderblades and presses down with his palms and his thumbs, until she gasps and then groans and then forces her muscles to loosen, as he helps them along.

"At the—the funeral," he says, after a minute. His hands haven't stopped moving. Her neck feels like overcooked pasta; it's a good thing she's lying down. "Before—before I got involved in this, before I knew, I—I told you, Sherlock saved my life, he gave me—he gave me the opportunity to _have_ a life, and I—I couldn't believe it, I told you, I didn't believe it, and you—for some reason you told me I didn't have to, and I—I'm still not certain why you did that."

She laughs. It doesn't sound quite right. She says, "Me neither, you know. Probably just your irresistible good looks."

He bends down and kisses the nape of her neck, then stretches out next to her, on his side. She rubs her fingertips over the side of his jaw. He hasn't shaved today. Looks tired. Been visiting John, then.

"Is he any better?" she asks, quiet. It's been eighteen months. Henry hasn't said "yes" to that question yet.

"Well, he's like us, isn't he?" Henry says, quiet, "He won't be better until he has another chance to make it right."

She takes a breath and holds it.

He sighs, and tucks her hair back. "I'm sorry," he says. "I didn't mean—I wouldn't ever ask you, love. I didn't _mean_ to ask you. And I—I don't care, you know, if you never tell me your real name or where you grew up or anything about your mum and dad or any of it, I really don't, but I—I recognize things in you, and I know, I _know_ what it looks like, I know what it feels like to have the entire wide-open possibility of your life resting on a debt you can't repay. I keep harassing the papers and I keep visiting John because I owe it to Sherlock that I wake up every morning and don't feel like I'm dangerous or losing my mind or a complete waste of oxygen, because Sherlock gave me enough information to make myself into something else. And I—I don't know how else to help but to try to keep John in one piece and not leave the media alone until Sherlock's cleared and he can come home. And I think—I think sometimes, I look at you, I look at the way you are with Mycroft and how hard you've pushed yourself on this and I think, 'She's like me, isn't she? She owes him, and she can't ever repay him.' So I—I know what that looks like."

She closes her eyes. He shifts closer and wraps his arm around her waist. He rubs at her back, up and down, up and down, and says nothing else.

"He caught me," she says, finally. Her voice breaks. "He—he _saw_ me, Henry, it was—I haven't made a mistake like that since—not since I was a girl, since before—before everything. It was—I didn't get to where I am by having civilians see me when I'm trying to stay out of sight, do you understand?"

"Yes," he says, quiet. His eyes are very dark. His mouth looks sad. His face is too close for her to see all of it at once.

"I didn't do my job," she says, and his arm tightens, and she takes a breath and says, "and—and yes, you're right, I owe Mr. Holmes. Mycroft. And I—I _care_ about him, as foolish as that is, and it's—it's his _family_ ," and her voice cracks again.

He leans in, and very gently kisses her cheek.

She takes a breath, and then another, and another.

"I don't want him to lose his family, too," she tells him, and then closes her eyes, and he kisses her cheek, her jaw, and rubs her back, until her breathing evens out again.

"Have you eaten anything today, love?" he asks, after a long, long while. "I can make you something. Cup of tea? Sandwich?"

She laughs, a little wetly. "I'm all right."

"Yeah?" he asks.

"Yeah," she says, quiet. "Just—stay, would you?"

He smiles at her. "You ask me to do such easy things for you," he says, tightening his arm around her waist.

"Not always," she murmurs. 

He brushes his mouth against the corner of hers, and she takes a breath.

"It's Eliška," she says, very quietly, and he stills, then pulls back, just enough to blink at her. "My name," she clarifies. "But you—I can't—you can't call me that. If you—it has to still be Anthea."

"I don't use your name much anyway," he admits, a little awkwardly. He's flushing pink, like there's a chance she hasn't noticed.

She nods and curls her fingertips against his neck. "I know," she says quietly. "That's why I told you."


End file.
